Junior, others feel their concerns fall on deaf ears (cont'd)

"It's just a sort of secret society thing that nobody knows about. That needs to be the case. Atlanta was just a reminder of that, really.

"We all do sound off and go push buttons a little too hard sometimes, but for the most part, we don't want to ruin the racing for the sport. We don't want to make it worse for the fans. We want to make it as big as we can make it, just like the rest of the guys in that [NASCAR] trailer down there do. We've got the same thing at stake when we go home. It's just as important to us that the race is great."

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Tony Stewart

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Stewart, who ignited the firestorm over tires, is content to express his own opinion as he sees fit and leave it at that.

"There was [a drivers association] in the IRL [Indy Racing League], but we never really did anything," he said Wednesday during a NASCAR Winner's Circle appearance at Martinsville Speedway. "I don't know that I want to be a part of that. I'm not sure I'm smart enough ...

"There's a lot that goes on. I'm one side of the pie, one side of the equation from the driver's side. Especially when you get up to this level of racing with NASCAR, there's so many angles -- marketing, advertising. How do you keep the fans happy? How do you keep the teams happy? How do you keep the drivers happy? There's a lot of variables that go into making that, and I'm not sure I want to be part of the decision-making process on that.

"If I feel like there's something that I first-hand have experience that something's not right, I don't have a problem saying, 'Hey, I think this is not right.' Then it's up to the people that do make the decisions to do the right thing at that point."

Gordon, Earnhardt's teammate, pointed to the negative effects strikes have had on other professional sports but nevertheless believes that drivers should voice their concerns and issues to NASCAR en masse.

"I think we all have so many different agendas and ideas that to see them all try to come together as one would be tough," Gordon said. "What I would like to do, I would like to see NASCAR have a quarterly meeting where they bring all the drivers into a room and bring up hot topics and talk about things and allow us to vent or to share our opinions -- and just listen to us.

"Just going up into the [NASCAR] trailer one at a time, where one guy says the exact opposite of the next guy who comes in -- I think all it does is confuse them. So we're not going anywhere. I believe communication is the key in every business and every team. We're together with them. We're partners in this whole thing. I would love to work with them further on that, but I'm out of breath doing it individually. It doesn't go anywhere."